Petraeus

My son-in-law has a business making metal refining installations, big drums full of flames using high temperatures to reclaim precious metals and rare earths out of metallic waste and ores. Each one is unique because the raw material differs in every case and so it must use different temperatures, catalysts, and dispose of different waste products. He rightly describes each one as a 'bespoke' product. Thankfully, he does not talk about his 'awesome team' 'reaching out' to his 'amazing customers'.

What is meant by the expression 'Quality of Life' in the context of improvements to software? I've heard the expression when talking about terminally ill people for example, or the benefits of working from home rather than the office, but the examples of 'QOL' quoted in the marketing blurbs don't seem to be anything more than minor tweaks. Am I missing something? Why don't I notice the quality of my live improve when I go to version 1.03b?

This afternoon I flew from LSZH to LTGS. I'd never been to LTGS before, so I ticked the 'Learn destination' box, on the assumption that a 2-hour flight would be enough to learn some of the aircraft that use that airport. (And I have the Pro edition of RealTraffic). When I got to LTGS, I was the only aircraft there. PSXT told me that it had updates on 49 aircraft, but 'No static aircraft to be parked, there are no parking options, let it learn the airport first'. Does this mean that the 'Learn destination' tick box is not the same as running Learner?

They are indeed impressive, although helped by the fact that the Arabian skies are rarely cloud-covered. Getting good photo scenery is more of a challenge in Alaska or northern Scandinavia.

Is that the Fenix you're referring to? If so that's a Fenix 'feature' when using a cockpit camera to look at the exterior.

If we are talking about the Megascenery photoscenery that we used to use in FSX and P3D, that's so '2018'. MSFS's scenery engine makes it completely redundant.

As a semantic aside, is the 'price point' the same as the 'price'?

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I've just got a Varjo Aero and now need to get one (or two) base stations. Newbie question, but will it work with any SteamVR™ 2.0 base station, or are different base stations specific to a particular manufacturer's headsets? When I look at adverts, they all seem to quote specific manufacturers.

Ah, that was the clue! Mode said something like 'learning airport'. So on a hunch, because Learner seemed to be under the control of PSXT, perhaps not properly shut down, I started PSXT and then closed it normally. Problem solved! Learner now accepts input. Earlier log below, FWIW. Mon Apr 18 09:22:53 2022 (utc) Learner version 10.0.0 ********************************** parameters ********************************** from C:\Users\cpaul\AppData\Roaming\Learner\parameters.xml MAIN_WINDOW_X=202 MAIN_WINDOW_Y=134 CHANGE_CARGO_FLAG_THRESHOLD=3 REMOVE_FALSE_THRESHOLD=50 PROGRAM_VERSION=10.0.0 AIRPORT= HIGH_PERF_AIRCRAFT=false LIGHT_AIRCRAFT=true HELICOPTERS=false DURATION_MINUTES=45 ******************************************************************************** RUNNING=true SERVER=false CLIENT=false LIVERIES_FOLDER=liveries STOCK_AIRPORTS_FOLDER=stock_airports ADDON_AIRPORTS_FOLDER=addon_airports CONTROLLED=true Read from data\dbase.xml : 2446 ICAO aircraft types of which 98 heavies, 231 large, 83 small, 180 helicopters, 79 heavy performane and 16 gliders 51 similar type rules 586 types with wingspan information average half wingspans: light 5.8m, small 9.3m, large 14.1m, heavy 25.7m, high_perf 6.8m, heli 6.0m, glider infm 6385 ICAO Airline codes, 39 PVT codes and 89 GOV codes 27068 dbase records AIRPORT= Traffic Reader connected QNH Reader connected No QNH received from RealTraffic in the last minute No traffic received from RealTraffic in the last minute No QNH received from RealTraffic in the last minute No traffic received from RealTraffic in the last minute

Last night I used Learner to collect data for EGLL. It collected over a hundred items in three hours. This morning, running Learner, the Airport field is blank, but neither will it accept any input. Putting the cursor on that field and clicking achieves nothing.

Of course not. Facts and evidence are for explaining the past. No facts and evidence can predict the future. Otherwise we'd all be horse betting billionaires. Predicting the future is all about extrapolation, intuition and imagination. I agree with Ridvan, although I'd say 'medium future', when putting on VR gear is as easy as slipping on a pair of sunglasses.

Al Hamra, 'the red one', in Arabic

I have tried this now for a couple of days with very complicated DPs and STARs. Absolutely flawless. Well done to the FBW team.

I was getting regular stutters. Something like every 15 minutes. Well, in fact, precisely every 15 minutes. Duh...the penny dropped. My FSUIPC Autosave was set to 15 minutes. Untick Autosave, and no more stutters. A shame in a way, because I've used FSUIPC for years, and it's a true life support system, not only device management but especially Autosave with earlier flight sims and their CTD's, but in reality it's not been much use in MSFS because I cant get restart to work well.

'I'm Petraeus and I'm an addict.' My confession is that I'll record a flight when I'm piloting in the cockpit, and then afterwards replay parts of it, looking out of a passenger window at the scenery, perhaps in different weather, or a different time of day, or even a different airplane. It's good to share this, but I'm not sure that listening to all you junkies is helping my own addiction.

Can't be sure of where they come from, and don't have time right now to investigate, but it must be picking them up from somewhere in my Communities folder.

I'm seeing live GA traffic. I was at KBTV yesterday and there were light Cessnas doing circuits and touch-and-goes. I'm using PSXT with AIG and IVAO.

I'm getting GA flights. Was at KBTV yesterday, and there were four C150/C170/C180? doing circuits and touch-and-goes. I'm using AIG and IVAO.

I worked in IT for the best part of 40 years. Occasionally, a mistake would slip through and a system would go wrong; the end users could get quite upset. I got it fixed as soon as possible, apologised, and tried to avoid any recurrence. I didn't refer to the end-users as 'entitled'.

I don't believe so - it's learning which airlines use which gates.

I will add that for me, Nico Kaan is one of the heroes of this hobby. He originally developed the freeware (or donationware) PSXseecon Traffic for FSX and P3D and extended it to MSFS later. He has continually improved it over the years and is very responsive to suggestions in the AVSIM forum. A couple of weeks ago I pointed out that the parsing of the aircraft in the IVAO collection was bypassing some models; within two hours he had issued a new version, and my available liveries rose from 1800+ to 2200+. Only this week he made a change to cater for the AIG models, and my liveries have now shot up to 4400+! And all with no 'model matching' on my part. A particularly favourite feature of mine is the 'Learner' program. This runs offline from the simulator, just connecting to the payware Real Traffic program. Point it at an airport or set of airports and it will run, looking at the real traffic that comes and goes, and build the equivalent of an AFCAD based on where the real aircraft park. So when you run the simulator, that's where it places the static aircraft for each airline. Or, if you are really fussy about these things, you can restrict the static aircraft to the actual time of day when they actually park, so that the Emirates A380 is only parked at EGCC in the late morning as in real life, not (heaven forbid!) at an unrealistic time in the afternoon. That's an example of Nico's inventiveness and care and attention.

They are not AI of course, they are real! And you are a matter of complete indifference to them; as far as they are concerned, you don't exist. Just like Lily James and me. However, the PSXT software will remove them temporarily when they encroach on your space. So if you are waiting to take off, the one in the queue behind you will not pass through you, but just disappear while you are waiting there. It's advisable to judge when to line up on the runway based on landing traffic, but if they land while you are on your takeoff roll you won't be aware of them because they will disappear rather than roll through you. Also, if they are in 'your' parking spot, you can just taxi in there and they will disappear, although there is a software option to reserve your specific parking spot at the arrival airport.

It makes the other aircraft use the real life runways, even complex operations like intersecting runway operations and (eg EGLL) alternating runways by time of day. It makes the other aircraft taxi at a realistic speed, not creep along. These aircraft follow recommended taxi routes and do not do their own AI thing. It makes landing aircraft get the hell off the runway and not dawdle around like programmed AI No ridiculous takeoff queues and go-arounds at single runway airports (eg EGKK) because of these 'runway blockers' It gives us 'string of pearl' landing queues but without go-arounds (except when they actually happen) It makes the other aircraft follow the real life DPs and STARs. It has each airline use their real life gates without needing AFCADs. It's a plane spotter's delight, with the occasional surprise ('I never knew xxxxxxx flew into xxxxxxx') You can play Live ATC, real not robotic voices, and it makes sense with what's happening around you. For me, the only downside was that during the worst of Covid, there was very little traffic to be seen, but hopefully that's all over now.

Indeed! How can it calculate V speeds if it doesn't know the flap setting? There was a problem in the Stable version, which may have since gone, that the speeds needed to be clicked in reverse order.